Ciao Primiero!

We are now in Primiero. We arrived the day before yesterday after a pretty cool drive from Asiago. Instead of taking valley roads we went across the plateau straight down into the valley then straight up the other side. The Italians sure know how to do switchbacks.

Primiero has a much more alpine feel than Asiago, we are very much sandwiched in between mountains. We have awesome views from pretty much anywhere in town.
Training yesterday was our first run on one of the official JWOC training maps. An area called Passo Cereda which is about 20 minutes drive up out of the valley. It is supposedly quite similar to portions of the middle map. We had a course with controls set by the organisers which most of the team did in its entirety. Some of us tested out some of the Leppin Sport products we are using. The forest had less scattered rock than Asiago and contours in places that felt a lot like Weiti, between 3 and 4 for instance with teh re-entrants ending part way up the slope. The rocks on the map were alot easier to read than in Asiago. The vegetation varied across the area, up by control 10 and 11 was perfectly clean and lightning fast, whereas 4 to 5 was quite green.

We encountered the ther teams for the first time today, Russa, Japan, South Africa and Hong Kong were all out on the map training at the same time as us. We expect to see heaps more of the other countries as the week progresses, as Primiero isn't a very big place! JWOC is being promoted much more than last year in Sweden. There are posters and o flags up in shops all over town and most of the lamp posts have JWOC 2009 flags hanging from them.

Everyone enjoyed the map and is happy with how the preparation is going. This morning some of the team are doing sprint training on a training map provided by the organisers with a pre marked course starting from our accomodation.

Passo Cereda training map: